


matched

by pensee



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types, Hannibal Lecter Tetralogy - Thomas Harris
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Additional characters being stalkers, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Online Dating, Canon-Typical Violence, Confusing use of Italics, Descriptions of a medical school cadaver, Descriptions of childhood bullying, Hannibal Lecter Being Hannibal Lecter, Hannibal Lecter being a stalker, Hannibal’s family is bonkers, Invasion of Privacy, Lab animal dissections, Lack of online dating etiquette, M/M, Male OC being a manipulative dick to get laid, Manipulative Hannibal Lecter, No Beta, Not with Will, Older Man/Younger Man, Show-level descriptions of cannibalism and related puns, Tangential allusions to true crime, Young Hannibal Lecter, Young Will Graham, the Verger family relationships are a warning in themselves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-02-29 17:34:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18782914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pensee/pseuds/pensee
Summary: Will meets a man called Lightbringer online.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please read the tags. Basically everything is canon-level squickiness, but don't want anyone to get triggered.

_JacktheRipper has viewed your profile. You and Jack share a blood type. Want to check your compatibility score?_

Will frowns at the notification, the sixth he’s received during this class period alone. It’s better than the ones that accuse him of using a stock photo for his profile picture, or asking whether he needs a good thrashing from daddy, but the types of people that are attracted to his page are getting worse and worse. His posting of an offhand comment about a murder that’s been in the news last week has led every crazy on the eastern seaboard to his dash, and he’s both secretly flattered and horrified at some of the things people have been willing to admit to a perfect stranger (and the rest of the internet).

_No thanks, Jack_ , he thinks, also weirded out by the fact his Criminology professor shares a name with the creepily appropriated profile. Flipping through his phone settings, he decides to turn off remote notifications, but one drops down just before he flicks the button from green to blank.

_Lightbringer_ has viewed your profile.

Scoffing at the implicature—Lucifer, really?—Will nonetheless appreciates that it’s not a dick joke or ugh, unnecessarily graphic dick measurements. Clicking on the e-mail, he scrolls through, expecting generic compliments, insults, or at the very least, a system-generated wink. Finds himself frowning deeper when there’s nothing. No reply, not even a thumb’s up or down on his current status.

Most people on this site jump at the various rating systems, even if they’re not actively pursuing anyone. Will had tried it himself, before he realized he was just contributing to the mountain of bullshit that lowered peoples’ self-esteem. Still, he can’t help but wonder why Lightbringer’s staying mum. Not a whole lot of singles trolling online consider that saying nothing is actually saying a whole friggin’ lot.

Clicking on Lightbringer’s site link, his brows furrow at the page banner, a Michelangelo-like reclining male nude, half of the face and abdomen vivisected in a way that makes Will think: _experienced surgeon_. Then: _psycho_. The fact that neither of these things is a turnoff is too telling for him to look into right now, so he just presses the heart icon on the profile before Crawford walks back in from his mid-lecture break and catches him on his phone.

God, Graham, what are you, a teenage girl?

Despite this, he hasn’t told anyone about his dating profile (Bev would have a field day), so no one can judge him but himself. The reality of it makes him feel a bit better for religiously checking his e-mail till he falls asleep, glasses askew into his pillow, waiting for the reply that never comes.

 

 

Will had never made friends easily.

Years later, he still remembers the girls in the schoolyard calling him names, making fun of his scraped knees and threadbare cargo shorts, confused at the truth he saw behind their jeering. They were jealous of him; he could read and answer questions they couldn’t, without even trying, and sometimes, the boys whispered about him, too.

When he’d lived in Biloxi, one of the older boys had called him prettier than Sarah Martens, the sixth grader who was always trying to date middle school boys. Sarah had given him a swirlie that day, dragged him into the girls’ bathroom where a teacher found him crying, though when Daddy picked him up an hour later, his eyes were dry.

He learned real fast that jealousy was just the precursor to fear, and fear came before hatred. He cut his long hair till it barely curled, tried to keep his eyes down, so that people wouldn’t be shocked by how blue they were, and started doing odd jobs to make sure the clothes he got from Goodwill at least looked like they belonged. Daddy didn’t sew and he didn’t have a Mom to make him things, to measure up to those little kids in bigger cities who shopped at Woolworth’s, not Cabela’s, so he made due on his own.

People started pairing up, and Will was fine being alone. Easier that way, when he’d diagnosed himself with an attachment disorder at fifteen. His dad had recommended therapy, and forgotten all about it when Mrs. Baker called him in for a parent-teacher appointment the year Will made it into GT classes in Florida.

Instead, Will took a boat out every weekend. Drank a little, returned sunburnt and a little more human, blood on his hands as he shucked scales and ripped tiny spines free for dinner.

 

 

Online dating is his compromise. Bev and the guys don’t press him about hooking up every other weekend how they do, and dodging awkward questions about his sexuality is practically non-existent, which he’s grateful for. But people are like donkeys; they’re always looking for companionship, and the shitty Lindon Hall dorms are barely enough to support human beings, much less than the pack of canines Will’s always wanted, so a puppy’s not really an option. At best, he’ll find someone to have coffee with that lives in the same county; at worst, he’ll get himself a stalker.

He’s not a violent person, but somehow, he knows that fighting off a stalker—if someone out there does want to follow little ol’ him—won’t be a problem.

Filling out the requisite data fields goes pretty easy. Male. 21. No sex or gender preference. Likes the outdoors, Admin of Justice major. Won’t object if you have a dog, or ten. Taking an Anatomy elective.

The last statement functions as a little screening process of his own; if they can resist the obvious puns, they might be worth talking to. Until Lightbringer, he blocks about sixty profiles.

This isn’t the 1950s anymore, anyone can make the first move, he tells himself, waking up the morning after Lightbringer first pops up on his dash, cheek warm from his still-lit phone screen, wiping drool off his screen protector. Eyes wide open when he reads his inbox, sees the brand-new message from an app-related address.

_Good morning, Will. I thought we’d dispense with the formalities. These online arrangements are only effective in the absence of deception, so in the spirit of honesty, allow me one observation: Your chosen profile picture is tasteless_.

It’s not even signed, save for the dating site handle, and Will’s initial reflex to delete the message—what an asshole—is replaced with a nagging need to know what the hell that means.

_Tasteless_? he types back, before he can stop himself. _Daily life is often not tasty, whoever you are._

The e-mail he’s waiting for doesn’t come till three days later, and Will wonders, walking listlessly through the halls, whether someone is watching him, smirking to themselves when he starts chewing on his nails in the middle of class, thinking he’s free of the desire to get a reasonable answer. We all want closure, though, and Will, in this case, is no different from everyone else.

_For those that appreciate the innocence of unspoiled beauty, there are equally opposite and equally strong instincts to both preserve such untouched flesh and yet feel desire to play despoiler whenever we perceive an invitation, whether a true invitation was offered or not. Should you choose to bare your throat in the future, I would suggest the photos be kept private_.

Biting his lower lip, Will sputters incredulously at the “offending” photo and the even more offensive e-mail. Great, not only did he have a stalker, the possessiveness was starting off early. Of course, it could be a wacko in a foreign country with some weirdly eloquent Google Translate (which would explain the overly precise phrasing).

Don’t do it. Don’t you fucking—.

_Too late_ , he tells himself, clicking the icon to open a private conversation. The request will make his personal e-mail available to whoever’s on the other end of the messages, if they choose to fulfill their end of the conversational bargain and release their own contact info.

_For my private collection_? he types, face flushing. _Or yours_?

The reply is devastating.

_You seem like a smart boy. I’ll give you a hint: Quid pro quo. You’ve shown me yours, I’ll show you mine_.

There is an attachment, and Will’s ready for the let-down, some crude dick pic or a creepy reveal of someone significantly older than Lightbringer’s profile had indicated (it was sparse for a reason, Graham, why’re you being so stupid, falling for a medical diagram, of all fucking things), but instead, he gets a gift. Or what he assumes is a gift, as much as a graphically captured butchering can be, fresh blood and all.

His heart stops at the reflective slickness of the intestines, spider webbed with capillaries, the swollen, beautiful crimson of an alcoholic’s heart. An unnatural purplish tinge to the lungs, which he assumes is dye.

_What the fuck_ , he thinks, mind racing, horrified and morbidly fascinated enough to read on. The dread pooling in his stomach is real, but so is the sick excitement of how Lightbringer could possibly ever top his own message today if their conversations continued.

_An old study cadaver, I’m afraid_ , the message reads, and Will senses mockery rather than a true apology.

Not fresh blood after all, he thinks, in some mournful tone he doesn’t want to think too hard about, and hopes never actually comes out of his mouth.

_Don’t worry about scrubbing your e-mail server, the material is educational public domain, though I will take credit for performing the autopsy._

It’s just a med school cadaver, Will breathes to himself. The educational equivalent of cruelties for science, although he knows everyone’s a volunteer. Can we really feel what happens to us after we die? Before, during, but not after; Will gets blurry on the details sometimes.

(In middle school, he’d run out of the room to throw up in the courtyard after he swore that pig’s heart was still beating).

He can’t help himself.

_Did you just present me with photographic evidence you killed someone, and then try to write it off as a joke? Also, I know you’re going to ask for something in exchange, so…I can play piano, but I don’t have room for one in my shitty one-room apartment. You seem to like things that are detail-oriented. You play_?

Seems like their conversation is over for the night, and Will shivers, waiting for a reply that doesn't show itself. Lightbringer doesn’t seem like they’d be interested in retreating after some clever wordplay, and Will doesn’t want to think about the darker alternative: that he’s pissed off someone who really shouldn’t be messed with.

It’s the internet, not a Tor server, he reassures himself, but he lays awake for a while, needing and dreading his phone pinging.

 

 

“No, I get the obsession, is what I’m saying. Like, a whole new generation of girls is getting exposed to these crimes on primetime, and everyone’s crazy for the bad boys.” There’s a boy in Will’s Abnormal Psychology class who talks about serial killers and violent schizophrenics like they’re his personal black book to getting laid, and to his dismay, Will notices that a few of the girls who’ve since dropped the class this semester had, unfortunately, fallen for the “I’m a dark, damaged soul” spiel. The boy’s selfish enough to kill a few lab rats and complain about how he’s a sociopath, but he’s a far cry from the next Garrett Jacob Hobbs.

“No, really, even my World Religions professor, you know, that young chick with those crazy curls. She’s all about it, she calls me into office hours so I can talk to her about fallen angels and shit,” the boy is bragging, and Will gulps, because Lightbringer is the original fallen angel, and it can’t be a coincidence.

Then, Doctor Heimlich pulls up a PowerPoint about a man who murdered half the attendees at a family reunion in the Heartland, and Will’s grasp on coincidence starts to turn grey.

The obnoxious boy hides his phone under his desk and his thumbs fly over the screen, but Will’s cell never chimes. And just like that, his already weak construct of who Lightbringer might be disappears like smoke.

 

 

_You’re from New Orleans. I’ve always wanted to try the cuisine, but I’ve never had the privilege_.

How does he—Will gasps to himself, checks the settings on his laptop. Shit, the last photo he posted was geotagged, right there under the site logo.

_It’s great, if you like spicy and sauces and everything homemade. I got a scholarship up North, but my dad died here, so I felt like I should stay, for at least a few years_.

Lightbringer doesn’t whine or try to steer the subject back to himself—Will thinks this person’s a guy; there’s no evidence of gender or gender preferences on their profile, but he’s so sure somehow—and Will smiles, a stupid little thing, because he can count on two fingers the number of men he’s ever met that are good and listening and talking, and one of them is already dead.

_Do you need assistance with tuition?_

_You read my profile. I’m not on here for sugar of the monetary type. I’m here to talk and maybe meet someone before anything else is involved_.

_That’s not what I asked. It’s a maddeningly polite answer, and not the answer I was looking for_.

_Leave it be. I don’t want a sugar daddy, and that’s the answer I’m sticking with_.

_If you ever change your mind_.

Will laughs aloud, an unattractive barking sound, at the attached .jpeg. A legitimate-looking account number with Wells-Fargo, a balance that would be more fitting for a professional athlete than a sugar baby staring back at him.

“Jesus,” he says. What is this?!

_Whatever it is, keep your money. I don’t want the FBI knocking on my door tomorrow asking why I took drug money from a stranger over a dating app_.

A short silence, and Will thinks, Great, did I just sink the first decent meal ticket I’ve ever seen?

_Clever boy. That’s the correct answer, though the account will be available for release at my discretion. In cash, if you prefer, though you must give me twenty-four-hour’s notice._

Fat chance, Will thinks, furtively saving the .jpeg anyway, double-checking that his web-cam hasn’t been remotely turned on as he does. These days, you can never be too careful.

 

 

“Jimmy swears he saw some flashy Mercedes stalking around the faculty parking earlier, tell him, Brian,” Bev is insisting, Will rolling his eyes. “This is a tiny state college; the faculty here would probably come up with a way to get to Mars before they could afford whatever Jimmy thought he saw.”

“I dunno, like half the profs are on sabbatical, and Freddie says there’s a guest lecturer in Psychopharm for the whole week. Weirdly last-minute.”

“Freddie says a lot of things,” Will says offhandedly, trying not to give his friends the asshole brushoff even though Crawford’s just sent a last-minute e-mail saying today’s class is optional and two hours early, for those who can attend. Will’s one of the goodie two shoes who always show up and take notes, even if it’s just a review day, and he usually needs the extra help anyway, because spouting crap from a book is not his forte unless he crams the night before.

He’s already ten minutes late, feeling like an idiot for not texting before going all the way back to the dorms to find out everyone was just going off campus for lunch instead. He’s looking down at his own feet instead of at where he’s going, so that’s his excuse for bumping into the stranger—wearing an actual suit and tie in this heat, by Geezus—and not apologizing save a quick, “Watch it, sorry.”

He doesn’t realize he’s knocked a book out of the stranger’s arms, though instead of picking up the accidentally discarded text, the stranger watches his retreating back, some expression like hunger in his eerie red eyes.

 

 

Lightbringer’s reply schedule seems to sync more with Will’s own this week, and for some reason, Will thinks this means they’re in the same time zone, if only temporarily. Lightbringer doesn’t talk about their work, but Will gets the vibe he might travel. Less often than a sleaze-ball salesman, more often than a cubicle monkey or a friendly neighborhood pathologist. He thinks about asking if he’s a coroner, but that’s stupid.

Coroners can travel in-state, but Will doesn’t get the vibe Lightbringer’s from the South. All that Old-World pretentiousness? That’s east coast.

The splayed-open corpse could’ve been a photo from today or from twenty years ago, so he could be a medical student or a full-fledged doctor. He’s not lying about his surgical skills, Will thinks, imagining as-yet featureless hands holding a scalpel. The visions don’t come unless they’re constructed, in pieces, from reality, and whoever cut open that body is as real as he is.

He doesn’t know whether the prickle at the back of his neck he feels at the thought is fear, but for a moment, he understands what it feels like to reach out into the world and be greeted with nothing but the cold, empty dark.

Too late to turn back.

 

 

_I would like very much to meet you_ , Lightbringer says, one Sunday, when Will should be doing his bio lab homework instead of talking to a faceless entity he’d met over the internet.

Hesitation, then, _I’d really like that, too_.

Will’s wondering about how the logistics would work out that he misses the homework notification that comes to his e-mail through the university server.

_Dude so unfair_ , Zeller complains, Price and Bev quick on his heels, their texts popping up all over his phone, obscuring his chat with Lightbringer.

_There’s a fucking three page summary due tomorrow FML._

_Why does Crawford hate us?_

_Daddy jus wants us to succeed. ya no suck seed._

_Shut up, Jimmy, ur bein a teachers pet and its creepy and don’t call Crawford daddy im your boyfriend you douche will._

_Will? Hellloooooooo. Damn it graham answer your damn phone. its about the Ripper. three more victims, Crawford wants us to comb through that shitty tattlecrime site and the FBI media releases for summary info, think its time to tell him that Freddie writes for tattlecrime, he’d stop using that as a source real fuckin quick_

A link pops up on Will’s phone screen, but he’s got his computer open at the same time, and he combs through his blowing-up e-mail for Lightbringer’s response first.

An address in Georgia. An Atlanta Starbucks, according to Google Maps, always busy, from the reviews. A neutral location if he’d ever seen one.

_This weekend_? he asks. _I haven’t got class Fridays_.

_Friday_ , Lightbringer says. _We’ll have lunch_.

Will texts Bev quicker than he’s ever done anything in his life before, because she’s always gonna be the closest thing he’s got to an emergency contact, and he’s pretty sure she knows it (God, she’s scolded him about the shitty state of his old windbreakers and actually threatened to give him her sisters’ hand-me-downs if he didn’t get himself something new).

_Going on a date next week Friday. Here’s the address, it’s a drive, I know. Gotta borrow Jimmy’s bug. Will return ASAP. If I don’t text u within an hr after I get there call national guard_

_Bitch wat??? the freakin Chesapeake Ripper guts three ppl yesterday and ur gonna go off on some romantic weekend after that hell no even if its in Atlanta_

_i found him on that app your sister recommended …_

_don’t u ever fucking tell her that she’ll lord it over me for years. there might have been a bet involved._

_so you’ll get me Jimmy’s keys and watch out for me in case he’s crazy?_

_you owe me, graham. i’ll even help you go shopping for good date clothes cuz u cant show up in fishing gear smh nothing wrong with waders_

_he knows i fish_

_but does he tho :/_  

 

 

Will knows he’s at a disadvantage, from the get-go. He only knows generic details, from the messages they’ve exchanged over the week.

His date’s late thirties, dark hair. Tends to dress formal, whatever that means; he just hopes the guy won’t show up in ascot and ask for his hand in marriage or anything weird like that.

Lingering in Starbucks without ordering or mooching off the free wi-fi is creepy, so he orders a water and eyes Jimmy’s Volkswagen parked in the lot across the way, sits on a table on the street, so there’s a lot of options to run, if Lightbringer turns out to not be the gentleman he presents himself to be.

Leg shaking impatiently, he fiddles with his phone and wonders why he’d bothered to show up so early, when this guy probably lived in Atlanta and had an hour’s drive (with traffic) at most. (He doesn’t allow himself to think about the possibility that this was just a really elaborate ploy to get him to a city he presumably knew nothing about; it had been a few years, but Will remembered enough to get around without GPS, even if this date didn’t know that. The fact that this thrilled rather than repelled him was unhealthy, at any rate.)

“Will,” a voice says, and that accent, it makes sense, now, all the precise grammar, something that might’ve been taught half a century ago.

“Lucifer, I’m guessing,” he smiles back, tentatively, though for some reason, his face hurts with how much he wants to flash a genuine good-to-see-you grin.

“Hannibal Lecter,” Lightbringer says, and Will notices he’s not empty-handed. There’s a cooler in his hands, and it should look ridiculous, with its little biohazard symbol, but he’s obviously repurposed something from work, and Will throws all his inhibitions about not taking food from a stranger out the window when he sees and smells the dishes that Hannibal places on the table. He’d accuse the guy of holding up a five-star restaurant, if he didn’t know better.

Lightbringer was good at taking things apart; of course, he’d be just as great at putting things together.

“I could buy you another drink, if you wanted, but I took the liberty of bringing water.”

Still sealed properly, in a glass bottle with a twist-off metal cap.

“You’ve got to stop it with the autopsy, organ-transplant, serial killer innuendos,” Will teases, biting into his food with what he hopes is a flirtatious look from beneath his eyelashes. “That cooler looks pretty real.”

“Would you prefer a freshly harvested transplant organ, repurposed as a more nefarious gift than the traditional bouquet?” Hannibal smirks, and oh, oh, Will thinks, oh Geezus, he’s gorgeous and funny, oh, Gawd.

“Maybe I would,” Will shrugs, humming at the last taste of marinade on his tongue. “But I’d be hard-pressed to choose between food and a still-bleeding heart. This is delicious.”

“You can have both, my darling,” Hannibal replies, and Will can’t help but gasp, before he covers it with a shaky laugh. “It’s a little early for pet names, isn’t it?” he says, glad they’re outside so he can pretend to squint at the bright light, looking away from Hannibal’s interested perusal of his reaction.

“No,” Hannibal says lowly, and Will would miss it except for how the rumble of it shivers up his arms, settles at his nape, in the hotness of his face.

“No,” Will parrots, softer.

Though, by the look in Hannibal’s eyes, Will’s sure he’s been heard.


	2. Chapter 2

“Have I satisfied your curiosity enough for you to trust me with such important information?”

Will’s eyes flick down to his empty plate, the half-drunk bottle of sparkling water on the table between them. He’s never really had anything more satisfying in his life; with nothing more than a handful of ingredients and a few devastating words, Hannibal’s managed to impress the unimpressable. 

“I think you done good,” he smiles, Hannibal’s expression barely changing though he reaches expectantly for the phone Will practically scrambles to produce ( _cool it, Graham),_ and turns over his own without thumbing through a code or anything.

Nothing to hide, or did he just have a fingerprint key?

Embarrassed at his carefulness though he has good reason to be, meeting a stranger like this, Will lingers on the generic contact icon on Hannibal’s screen, contemplating to whether he should change it to something more personal.

Peering over at Hannibal, who seems genuinely interested in how to work Will’s ancient phone, he decides that it would probably be a welcome liberty, an olive branch of sorts. 

I trust you.

Arranging his face into something he hopes doesn’t look too much like a scowl, Will quickly snaps a picture with the front-facing camera, uploading it to his contact entry and cropping it so most of the background is cut out.

Its just a dumb picture, he thinks, blanking out the Name field, typing in Darling before he can stop himself. Turns off the screen before Hannibal can make fun of him, or compliment him on the choice, he doesn’t know which alternative would be worse. 

“Your screen sensitivity is appalling,” Hannibal comments, though he doesn’t dump Will’s phone back on the table in disgust how most people would, instead returning it to his hand and cupping his own around Will’s wrist like they’re exchanging tokens before going off to war. 

I don’t want you to go back to Baltimore, he wants to say, when Hannibal finally lets his hand go, starts packing up the cooler with its licked-clean dishes. But Hannibal has work, Will still has that paper due for Crawford, and the world will keep on turning regardless of whether or not their date ends. 

“This was really nice. Exactly what I needed,” Will murmurs, Hannibal leaning down at the same time he gathers the courage to look up, to say goodbye properly. 

Wanted, he should say. Just what I wanted. 

Their lips meet in the middle, and Will forces his eyes to shut, to stop trying to make the moment last forever. He has Hannibal’s real name now, and they’d just exchanged phone numbers and personal emails, to talk more often off the dating app. It seems like their interest is mutual, and he tells himself there will be plenty of new times like these in the future. 

Still, it’s nauseatingly disappointing when Hannibal pulls back without even a hint of trying to deepen the kiss, Will’s mouth hanging open in half-shock, half-mystification that it could be over so soon.

“We’ll talk after my next shift. I want to know how your paper goes,” Hannibal says, and Will nods dumbly, waving as Hannibal starts off down the sidewalk, quickly disappearing behind a corner bakery with tinted windows. 

“I—,” Will croaks belatedly, but Hannibal’s already gone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *gasps*


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific warnings: Lab animal dissections, Abel Gideon and other episodic killers brought up in passing, so some violence. Will catches a viral infection (not encephalitis). Also, the Vergers are going to be introduced, so brace for Mason being Mason.
> 
> Otherwise, enjoy.

 

Will can’t focus on his schoolwork or the lab he’s assisting with, everything else outside of thinking of Hannibal foggy and by rote. He turns in the Chesapeake Ripper paper a day late, but gets an A anyway for his “intense use of the literature”, which is Crawford’s way of saying everyone gets free points for using the DSM and the _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_ to try to put a reason behind why the Ripper does what he does.

Normally, writing about the Ripper would be the most engaging part of his week, but he goes through the motions in order to make the deadline without analyzing as much as he would’ve liked to.

What’s wrong with me?

 _You know exactly what’s wrong with you_ , his father’s voice chimes back, the chuckle in it as rich as it ever had been. There were things Will had seen in his short life that he would pay to forget, but good or bad, his father’s ghost would always remain.

 _You’re just scared of hearing what I have to say, Willy_ , his father continues, and Will shakes his head, tries to concentrate on the text he’s composing, gives up and hits call instead.

“I just don’t want the rug yanked out from under me again,” Will says aloud, clapping a hand over his mouth as the other line picks up.

“What was that, darling?”

“Nothing. Uh, hi,” he says. I’ve barely met you, and I already don’t wanna lose you.

“Hello, Will,” Hannibal says, warmly, like they’ve been having a conversation all this time, and Will’s just walked back into the room.

Will can’t tell him (it’s too early, it’s too weird) that hearing his voice again helps him feel like he can finally breathe.

 

 

 

The biology lab that Will sets up every week is studying embryonic development in mammals, and he mindlessly separates the pig fetuses from their mother, five piglets in total, one for each pair’s bench. Mops up the excess blood and formaldehyde, sprays down and scrubs at the dull, dirty scalpels the instructor forgot to give him last week.

Bev peeks in about twenty minutes before class starts, says a quick hello to Dr. Bell, who’s frantically trying to sort out last week’s worksheets from the mess the copy machine made of today’s quiz.

“Soooo, you never told us how it went! You were really quiet at lunch, and not to mention the whole weekend was radio silence after you showed up at my room to tell me you got back safe.”

He laughs, because he can tell where her train of thought is going—his date was a dick, a pervert, fifty years older than his profile said—but it’s really none of the above. He didn’t want to make a bigger deal of it than it already was.

Skipping to the point, he whispers, like a secret, though Dr. Bell’s got attention for nothing else save rifling through papers, “I really wanna see him again. We don’t even talk on the app anymore. Just over the phone. I was thinking of driving up to Baltimore this—.”

“Wait, hold on a sec. He’s from Baltimore? You know I really wasn’t kidding about the Ripper, right?”

Beverly sounds genuinely worried enough that he stops fiddling with the biohazard trash can and turns to face her entirely.

“There are millions of people in Maryland who aren’t the Chesapeake Ripper. Hannibal’s one of them,” he says, trying not to be on the defensive, though he knows it sounds that way.

“Uh, hello, you said he’s a surgeon, right? Abel Gideon, respected pediatric surgeon, also from Baltimore. Killed his wife and three of his in-laws before the cops got there. A neighbor called because they heard the screaming. A. Block. Away.”

“You’re worried for nothing. Gideon’s in prison, and he doesn’t kill strangers.”

“Yeah, just people everyone thought he _liked_ ,” she says, crossing her arms at him basically just making her point for her. “You’re the one who knows true crime stats like the back of your hand. Eldon Stammets and that Buddish guy stalked people they met online, killed most of the ones they met in person. Virginia, New Hampshire, Maryland; wherever the bad guys pop up, I just don’t want you to get hurt. Maybe we could go with you, if you really wanna see this guy so badly.”

Will tosses away his gloves and fixes his glasses so he has something to do that’s not grab Bev and pull her into an awkward hug. No one’s cared this much about him in a long time, and it’s…nice.

“Did something happen, happen? Like, something involving a condom happen?” she asks, raising an eyebrow and letting out a giggle at his nervous cough. Her reflexive grip on his arm hurts, but he doesn’t say anything because he figures he owes her that hug somehow.

“No, it’s just. He kissed me, a little. That’s it.”

“No, no, I don’t believe that, no kiss is making you, Mr. Stoic-Bored-Face start daydreaming in the middle of dissecting dead pigs. Your McDreamy’s got you fantasizing about the D a whole week after your first date.”

“Bev, stop,” he laughs, Dr. Bell looking up and scolding them as his students start to filter in, door banging loudly against the wall.

“That wasn’t a negotiation, though. At least one of us is going with you if you drive up there again. Yeesh, it must’ve been really perfect, for you to make all that effort twice in the same month.”

There was something bothering him—that short goodbye, going over and over in his head why Hannibal hadn’t even said anything about the kiss. They talked about Will’s homework, the medical journal that Hannibal edited, things on the news, but nothing ever more personal than that. It was still meaningful, hearing the tone of Hannibal’s voice change, noticing that he argued some points more than others, but this wasn’t healthy, not acknowledging the elephant in the room. There’d been no walk of shame included, so the only thing Will could think of was that Hannibal wanted him to be the one to cave first and bring it up.

It’s either devious or sweet, and Will wonders when the two had begun to blur. Whether it was something that started with Hannibal, or whether he’d always been a little messed up in the head about what affection really meant.

“Okay, fine, you can come with me next time. I’ll just introduce you as my _mom_.”

Bev winks goofily at him, and he can’t even pretend to be frustrated at her after that.

 

 

Unfortunately for best laid plans, he gets violently sick by the end of the week, along with half of the biology lab.

Contaminated dissection animals, Dr. Bell says by email, though Will’s sure he didn’t do something stupid like rub his gloved hands all over his face before he washed up. Maybe it’s a freak off-season flu, maybe it’s the plague, but the nurse’s office sends him home with an aspirin and the local free clinic tells him it’ll be a three hour wait if he wants to be seen.

He’s walking out of the building and dialing Hannibal’s number before the desk clerk can finish explaining to him that they’re too busy to take him.

“C-Can you come pick me up?”

“I already know you’re a smart boy, but is this a situation that would require you to call 911?” Hannibal says, completely calm, though Will can hear an engine starting up through the slight static on the line.

He laughs, dryly, tries not to shiver at the word _boy_. “God, no, just—I need someone—I’m sick, and I don’t want to walk into an emergency room for antibiotics and a thousand-dollar bill. The free clinic’s too busy, and I don’t wanna be alone right now.”

Despite the threat of encroaching on Hannibal’s work hours, he doesn’t take back his request or ask a second time when Hannibal tells him he’ll be there as soon as he can.

“Give me your symptoms and your address now. Are you still at the free clinic?”

“No,” he sniffles. “I’m on a bus back to campus.”

“Will,” he scolds, though he doesn’t try to press.

“What are you doing right now?”

A pause.

“I was filling out insurance paperwork, but I left my office as soon as you called. I’m going to pick you up and bring you to the hospital, and we’ll work from there.”

“It’s late afternoon. You’re gonna be driving all night.”

“So I’ll drive,” Hannibal says.

 

 

 

Will’s last conscious thought is meaning to let Beverly or anyone know where he’s going, but he drifts off mid-afternoon into a nauseated sleep before he can so much as plug in a quick text on his phone. What feels like less than an hour later, Hannibal’s shaking him awake, brow creased in concern. The clock on his bedside table is out of sight from this angle, but there’s a hint of orange rising over the tops of the trees outside.

Normally, Will would shove his glasses up his face and frantically try to back away from someone standing this close to him, though he feels none of this desperation with Hannibal, leaning in and shivering in spite of himself.

Fuck, this was not a great second impression to make. Thank God he’d left his door open and that everyone else was out getting wasted and not around to comment on the old man in a suit skulking around the dorms.

“How’d you get here so fast?” he asks, as Hannibal practically picks him up and guides him out into the parking lot behind his dorm.

“The devil works in mysterious ways,” Hannibal says, very serious, and it takes Will a moment to laugh.

“Okay, _religious_ dad jokes, you’re trying to make me gag.”

“I may have broken a few traffic laws,” Hannibal says, and brushes Will’s hair back from his face.

“Thanks,” Will says softly, eyes widening when Hannibal steers him towards a shiny black sedan that Will knows probably costs more money than he’ll make in the next decade.

“Did you buy that new?” he squeaks, Hannibal answering with a simple, “Yes” and dropping the topic, clearly intent on diagnosing Will as they drive.

“Chills, aches, discharge of any kind? Gastrointestinal symptoms?”

His speech is clipped, almost as if he does not have much practice with people who are not triage nurses.

“I—I wouldn’t have expected that from you. Your bedside manner is surprisingly lacking, Doctor Lecter.” He pauses to cough wetly as Hannibal holds the door open for him. “You can slow down with the rapid-fire questions. ‘M not goin’ anywhere anytime soon.”

Hannibal looks taken aback, and Will feels the urge to laugh, though he gets that this is probably not a regular occurrence for him.

“I apologize if I was curt with you earlier. I am…unusually concerned about your well-being, although it’s likely nothing serious.”

“Unusually concerned,” Will parrots back. “I get unusually concerned, too, when the store doesn’t have the brand of milk I like.”

“Regardless,” Hannibal says, his mouth flattened, and Will thinks it must be a capitol crime, for a man to look that attractive and that irritated at the same time. “It would behoove you to answer my questions, Will.”

Will’s chest twinges.

“Please don’t call me that,” he says, in a voice so small he hates himself for it. “That’s what my friends and my professors call me. You do that thing, where you call me—.”

“Darling,” Hannibal says, and he’s nearly smiling now.

On any other person, Will would call the expression he’s wearing “smug”, but Hannibal just seems generally pleased with their situation as they pull out of town.

 

 

 

Maryland Misericordia is a lumpy concrete building with a lack of windows, Will thinks, not quite prison-like but also not quite somewhere he’d want to spend any extended amount of time.

He stares at the pink floor tiles, trusting Hannibal to lead him to where they have to go, and barely suppresses a needy whimper when Hannibal steers him from the doctor’s parking and into the lobby…into the arms of a stranger.

“Hey, Will,” Barney—Nurse Matthews, his nametag reads—says, a real pro at this and already assuming Will feels like shit, his voice soft instead of artificially peppy. Will recognizes Barney’s voice from a phone call earlier in the car, but he’d rather have Hannibal be the one to take him upstairs.

“Doctor Lecter’s gonna get a few things from the stockroom, and with your permission, I’ll take your vitals and a sample of your blood after you fill out the intake paperwork,” Barney says, keeping a hand high on his back for support but not sticking as close to him as Hannibal had been.

Will likes him already, and leans his head back against the wall of the slow-moving elevator as they climb up to the third floor, listening to Barney’s silence and appreciating the small, friendly smile as they walk together to the nurse’s station. The form clipped to a manila folder is already half-filled by the desk nurse, and Will goes through his personal details, privately thinking it both sad and tedious that his life can be reduced to a few letters and a row of checkboxes, yes or no.

Barney gets him to the room furthest away from the nurse’s station and drags two chairs in front of a table covered in what looks like old sandwich crumbs. It occurs to Will that this must be a breakroom, and he laughs deliriously to himself as Barney wheels in an automated machine that takes his heart rate and blood pressure, opens his mouth for a thermometer.

God, it feels like he hasn’t slept right in days.

Barney enters the requisite information onto an iPad he puts back onto a little basket attached to the machine, and puts on fresh nitrile gloves to get to the phlebotomy he promised earlier.

Will barely notices the prick of the needle, and within a minute, Barney’s untied the thick rubber band from around his arm and he’s free to go to Hannibal’s office.

“His office is on the fourth floor, room 431,” Barney says. “I’ll get your blood to the lab, and Doctor Lecter will have a better idea of what it is in a few hours. You want a soda or something before we go up there? Ginger ale?”

“No, thank you, this is…thank you, Barney.”

“Welcome,” Barney says, pleasant as all heck, and Will sighs gratefully as they get into the elevator.

 

 

 

Hannibal barely has anything in his office, just a single shelf with a few medical dictionaries, an inbox below his name on the door. There’s a small mountain of papers on his desk, but everything’s freakishly neat, and Will basks in the simplicity of it for a moment before Barney nods at him and walks away.

“Thank you, Barney,” Hannibal says, his back to them, and Barney calls out, “Welcome, Doctor Lecter.”

“Whaddaya got there?” Will asks, sinking down into one of the ugly green upholstered chairs opposite Hannibal’s desk.

What he expects is maybe offering of an aspirin or a bottled water, not Hannibal abruptly getting up close and sniffing at his hair. He can feel Hannibal’s nose brushing beneath the back of his ear, and pulls a face at the ticklish shiver that crawls up his spine.

“Um, hello to you too,” he says, Hannibal retreating to his own space perched on the edge of his desk as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

“You’re running a low-grade fever. Take two of these now, and we’ll see what the blood test says in a while.”

He hands Will an unopened container of something with an unfamiliar brand name and a chemical description Will doesn’t want to even try pronouncing.

“Is this like Amantadine or something?” he asks, and Hannibal nods.

“Based on what you told me, I don’t think your infection is bacterial. I’ve noticed, over the years, that viral infections tend to smell less putrid.”

Will frowns.

“That’s a real thing. Hyper—.”

“Extremely sensitive sense of smell,” Hannibal says. “In less technical terms, though the disorder I was born with is perhaps absent in the medical literature and thus indescribable in the traditional sense. It is a helpful diagnostic tool, at any rate.”

Will smiles to himself, trying to keep the glee out of his voice.

“I knew you weren’t exactly normal, just by the way you organized your profile, but you’re starting to get weirder and weirder.”

Hannibal sits up even straighter, but not in offense.

“You don’t seem to mind.”

“I really don’t m—,” Will starts, but stalls at a soft knock on the open door. He cranes his neck towards the doorway, and sees a woman in a dark red coat holding a little girl’s hand, the girl hiding behind her right leg.

Swallowing, the sound loud in his ears, Will waits to hear what the woman has to say, but Hannibal speaks first.

“Alana,” he says. “I called to reschedule. Did you not get my message?”

Now that Will looks closer, he can see the woman’s eyes are bloodshot, like she’s been drinking, crying, or both recently. Her hair’s windblown though there’s barely a breeze today.

“No, I—Christ, I didn’t. I’m sorry, Hannibal,” she says, the crestfallen look on her face apparently enough to sway Hannibal, who ushers them inside and shuts the door behind them.

“They let me take her for the day, but Margot’s just called to tell me she's in the hospital, Mason’s done something to her again, and I can’t have Abigail around that, it’s not healthy. She doesn’t want to go back to Port Haven, and I don’t want to push her, it’s just for a few hours, I swear, while I go check on Margot.”

Will expects the girl to continue to firmly plant herself at Alana’s side, though as soon as Alana finishes talking, her hands still soothingly stroking Abigail’s hair, the little girl breaks out of her hold and races across the small space to bury herself against Hannibal’s side.

“Hannibal,” she half-sobs, and Will’s heart breaks at the hurt in her voice.

Alana bites her bottom lip, her face contorted in silence while Hannibal gently puts an arm around Abigail’s tiny shoulders, remaining eerily still as she cries.

Will awkwardly shifts in his chair, and the slight squeak of fake leather against his legs brings Abigail’s blue-eyed gaze his way, and she wipes her face with a clenched fist, noticing him for the first time.

“I’m Abigail,” she says, and Will wonders if it’s his imagination, the sudden chill in the room.

“Will,” he says, not daring to go anywhere beyond that as Alana looks him over curiously and Hannibal looks at him with no expression at all.

 _That’s the Minnesota Shrike’s daughter_ , his mind races, repeating the utterance like a mantra as Alana makes her hasty apologies and says her goodbyes.

“Hey, Will,” Abigail says, poking his arm and shrugging off her small yellow backpack. “Alana got books and lots of colors for me. Wanna share?”

Will wants to say something a little more intelligent and hopefully enthusiastic, but all that comes out is, “Uh-huh.”

 _The Shrike, the Shrike_ , he thinks, Garrett Jacob Hobbs—a man he’s only seen on Jack Crawford’s class PowerPoints and in tabloid pictures—suddenly blinking to life in the opposite corner of the room, ten bullet holes across center mass and his pale hands clapping, a nasty smile in his milky white eyes.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We hear a bit from Hannibal’s POV this chapter. Warning, he’s as much of a creeper as he seems.

“Why didn’t you tell me you knew the Minnesota Shrike’s daughter?”

It comes out too harsh, and Will winces at his tone, but he wants to know, and Hannibal doesn’t seem to be annoyed that he isn’t in the mood to politely mince words. This is surprisingly tolerant, for a person he guesses values manners highly, even under duress, but considering the circumstances, maybe he’ll make an exception.

That little glitch earlier, when Hannibal had apologized for his curtness because he was being concerned. Will smiles hesitantly to himself at the prospect of the doctor not being so perfect after all.

“We’ve talked about many things, including our shared interest in true crime, but I did not think Abigail should be paraded around like a living souvenir of her father’s depravity. And I know you agree,” he continues, handing Will a different prescription this time, Will studying the medical paperwork on his own chart with a small frown. “You were simply curious.”

Will runs a hand through his hair. “Alana mentioned that she’d picked up Abigail from that place…Port Haven is a psychiatric facility, right? The news made a big deal out of it, when the FBI put Georgia Madchen there, after she’d stabbed her best friend.” He traces a finger over the coloring book page Abigail had left behind, after Alana had returned to collect her. Everything the little girl filled in had been in bright red.

The pill dissolves in his mouth, a bright, metallic aftertaste having him reaching for the ginger ale he’d accepted from Barney after all, draining most of the bottle before setting it back down.

“Alana has appointed herself as Abigail’s caretaker. The FBI agent that killed her father felt that it was wise if he did not get too involved, though he was willing to call in a few favors to ensure that Abigail would not be rushed into the foster care system before she received the proper psychiatric care.”

Hannibal pauses to let his words sink in, and Will guesses Hannibal just wants him to feel uncomfortable enough in the silence that he’ll look up at him.

“This doesn’t leave this room, of course.”

There was no question it wouldn’t, but by the subtle calculation lurking in Hannibal’s dark eyes, Will knows he better be clear and say so out loud.

“Of course, you know it won’t. Um, thanks for humoring me.” He uses the tissues on the corner of Hannibal’s desk to swipe at his nose, and shifts his gaze to his knees, tucked beneath him on the ugly green chair.

Like a cloud passing over the sun, Hannibal’s features relax into a warm sympathy that makes Will want to bite his nails to have something to do with himself, though he’d kicked the habit years ago.

“A perk of our relationship, I believe. I humor you; you amuse me. It’s very difficult to find a person such as yourself, Will; equal parts confident and unsure, and much more openly so than I am used to. It’s refreshing.”

“You’ve just been hanging out with overachievers too often,” Will mutters. He’d remembered something from Googling Hannibal’s name before he left Atlanta. One of Johns Hopkins’s youngest medical school graduates. Egad.

“Or perhaps you are just honest,” Hannibal whispers, close again as if he is going to smell him, but he tips Will’s chin up so there’s no mistake what he’s about to do. He’s sitting on the edge of his desk, and that’s too far for Will to reach, he thinks, clumsily getting to his feet and accidentally crumpling Abigail’s drawing. Shoving it somewhere—maybe the floor, Hannibal’s desk chair, out of the way in general?—he tries to perch on the empty end of the desk, but mostly ends up with his legs sprawled out over Hannibal’s lap.

“Okay, wow,” he laughs. “I think I’m still woozy.” As if he hadn’t already slept about forty hours straight within the last few days, trying to fight this damned bug off. Or maybe it’s because he’s closer to Hannibal than you could get through a computer screen, and he doesn’t seem put off at all by the fact that Will’s sick.

“This is hardly being a responsible physician, Doctor Lecter,” he says, trying for serious but really just glad for the contact, Hannibal’s broad hand stroking his knee. “If you catch something from me, you’ll probably spread it across this whole hospital.” He blames his cold or flu or whatever this is on how breathy his voice sounds.

“I don’t get sick,” Hannibal corrects him, and Will laughs.

“Then are you gonna come over here?”

He’s read what feels like hundreds of pages on nosocomial infections for Anatomy and why doctors always take precautions to not act as vectors for infection, but that’s the last thing on his mind right now, because Hannibal’s actually not bluffing, leading him into the kiss, Will gasping at the gentle touch of tongue.

“I’ll submit your paperwork, and then I’ll take you home.”

There are alarm bells going off in Will’s head at the mention of home— _so_ not a neutral location—but he’s shockingly willing to go along with it at the promise of rest in a bed that doesn’t smell like disinfectant.

“I-I have to make a call,” Will says— _God, why am I_ panting—and adjusts his glasses.

Hannibal nods, and kisses him again, on the forehead this time.

Will stares at his phone for a straight minute after Hannibal walks out, Zeller’s contact open, all he would have to do press the call button. Brian would freak out the least, he thinks. At least it’s Friday, and it’s not unusual for him to be locked up in his dorm room instead of palling around with them around campus.

He grunts, frustrated, as he shuts his phone screen off without making the call.

The phone will be there if anything happens, he tells himself. Then: _If this doesn’t kill me, Bev sure will when she finds out I’m gone._

The instant before he finishes the thought, Hannibal’s approaching steps echo down the hall, and he smiles at Will, grabbing his coat off the back of his chair and draping it over Will’s hunched shoulders.

“All ready?” he asks, while Will’s still tripping through processing the whole He-Gave-Me-His-Jacket Thing.

“Mm-hm,” Will nods, remembering at the last minute to grab Abigail’s coloring book page from where it had landed on the opposite corner of the desk. Feels like it would be too much trouble to ask if Hannibal wanted to keep it in his office, then find the right place to put it, so he just folds it neatly as possible into the breast pocket of Hannibal’s coat. “Um, when you see Barney next, can you tell him thanks again, for bein’ so nice? It ain’t his job to be fetchin’ sodas for stupid kids with no medical insurance.”

Hannibal looks at him for a moment, as if he’s given him some wonderful surprise. Either that or, the pessimist in him chimes in, he’s a pet that’s just done an unexpected and complicated trick without being taught.

The most concerning part, of course, being his thought immediately after: _I wonder if he likes dogs_.

“I’ll tell him as soon as I return,” Hannibal says, and Will manages to make a short, unhappy sound that genuinely sounds like a whining puppy.

“…Because you’re comin’ right back here after you drop me off at yours.”

Hannibal doesn’t say anything in reply, because they both know Hannibal’s got a more serious job than taking care of someone who’s not even his family, no matter how legitimate a medical excuse it is.

“We’ll find a comfortable spot for you in the main house,” Hannibal says, after they walk back out to his car in companionable silence.

“Sure,” Will hums, thinking he’s joking.

 

 

He’s not joking.

The veritable monstrosity of a place he drives up to is actually dwarfed by his neighbors, though Hannibal gives him an abbreviated tour of the enormous foyer, briefly mentioning the guest dining hall, the guest rooms and the downstairs study, while walking him down a long hall that leads to another common room and the long staircase leading up to the second floor.

“Come on,” Hannibal says, while Will scrutinizes a terra cotta vessel filled with river pebbles, its side etched with kanji.

He has no idea whether he likes any of it or not, but the matter of whether or not that bank account information Hannibal had once sent him over the app was real is finally settled. Christ, if Will had this much money, he’d give half of it to charity and spend the other half sailing the world for the rest of his life.

 _Running away_ , a voice hisses, and Will jerks, halfway up the steps, at the ghoulish form standing in the closest doorway.

“Hobbs,” he says aloud, and Hannibal’s guiding hand on his side tightens.

“Will,” he says, carefully. Not darling. “What about Hobbs?”

I’m not crazy, Will wants to mutter, though that’s exactly what’ll earn him even more unwanted attention. He wants Hannibal holding him, and sleep, in that order.

Grow up, Graham.

“N-Nothin’. ‘M seein’ things. Still tired,” he shrugs, hoping Hannibal will write it off.

Hannibal’s brow furrows, but he doesn’t say anything save, “Last door on the right.”

Will pulls in a long, shaky breath as he realizes that this isn’t a particularly cushy second-floor guest room. The dark walls, framed Japanese woodblock prints that he’ll really have to ask about later, and a full sheath of samurai armor displayed in a shrine.

The bed is the largest Will’s ever seen in his life, and his eyes go wide, fingers scrambling for the doorway.

“I-I can’t sleep in your bed,” he protests, because this has just gotten out of hand, but Hannibal’s already turned, his footfalls retreating downstairs, and Will shakes his head.

Jesus, of course Hannibal wasn’t going to try anything funny.

Will talks himself into taking his shoes off, but that’s as far as he gets before Hannibal returns, puts a pitcher of water on the low table in a seating area near the door, the metal fogging with condensation. On the platter next to the water is a glass, the same medicine from the hospital, and a note that Will cannot read in detail from this distance but looks neat enough to have issued from a typewriter.

“Did you write that?” he asks, and Hannibal shows a flash of teeth.

“You’re exhausted. Exhaustion can lead to confusion, and I can’t have you forgetting how to take your medicine properly. Hopefully, my writing is legible.”

 _If you ever needed a second career, go into lettering_ , Will wants to joke, but he’s a little distracted by Hannibal slipping off the jacket around his shoulders—only the jacket—and placing Abigail’s drawing on the night stand next to the bed.

“Can you do the rest yourself?” he asks, and Will prays that he doesn’t imagine the hint of roughness in the other man’s voice.

“Undress?” he whispers, like a dirty word. “Y-yeah, I can get the rest.”

“I believe I have a charger that will fit your phone in the top drawer. Please be sure to check it, if you stir.”

“Yeah, ‘course.”

Will rifles around in the drawer—not for long, everything is organized in little cubbies, which Will, who organizes his t-shirts in neat display rows in his own sad, tiny dorm room drawers can appreciate—and produces the charger, breaking out in goosebumps when he notices that Hannibal has moved soundlessly across the room and is standing right behind him, nosing behind his ear.

“Are you secretly a werewolf or something? Because if you are, please get the whole dramatic reveal over with now,” he says, reedy, as Hannibal squeezes his hip and pulls away.

“Your scent is improving already,” he says. “With rest, you should be able to get the infection under control in the next few days. I will be back soon.”

He moves purposefully towards the door, and Will shrinks at the thought of Hannibal feeling burdened by him so much that he feels physically compelled to leave before he does the rude thing and says it aloud.

Can’t be, he’s the one that brought you here in the first place. Get some fucking sleep, you’re hallucinating.

“Okay, bye,” he manages, and Hannibal dims the scattered lamps around the room with the switch by the door.

“Rest well, darling,” Hannibal says, his voice echoing down the long hall and settling in Will’s chest.

Might as well, Will thinks, and tip toes to the door when he’s sure Hannibal’s downstairs or gone back to his car.

The lock looks pretty old, but though Hannibal is lithe and tall, Will doesn’t think he has the brute strength to bring the door down on his own.

Sliding the lock into place, he sighs to himself, falling into bed fully clothed.

 _Now I can sleep_.

 

 

Hannibal hears the click of his bedroom lock, and thinks, halfway to vicious, _Clever boy_.

From experience, he knows a locked door would only keep him at bay for so long, but the way he intends to ravish Will is significantly less violent than he deals with most. Unless Will proved to be equally aggressive, after which he would adapt. While Will’s docility was innately appealing, Hannibal felt it unnecessary and inexcusable to lump his darling in with the meek rubberneckers that were often attracted to public figures like himself and Hobbs.

He’d read a few of Will’s homework assignments, and come to the conclusion that the boy was not out to change or understand the rationality, if any existed, among criminals. He simply saw seemingly unrelated jigsaw pieces as what they were: keys to a bigger picture, and had skill at assembling them in the proper order.

Hannibal did not often feel entirely engaged by his affairs, but the strong desire he had to bar his own bedroom door from the _outside_ was nearly all-consuming.

Fascinating, he thought to himself, smiling crookedly in a way his aunt had once accused of being _terribly boyish_ , with a flirtatious quirk to her own lips.

No doubt their relationship, as it progressed, would produce all manner of private jokes like these. His growing intentions to keep Will here would confirm his friends’ concerns over Will going off on his own with a veritable stranger, but he was hardly ever lazy enough to get accused of anything, much less caught.

Tossing his keys up in the air and catching them, he scoffs to himself at how easily this boy has moved him, feeling as if he is in school again, setting off firecrackers in the provost’s lounge to the mortification of the day maid, who had trusted him enough to give him the key.

 

 

 

Will’s phone beeps loudly sometime around midnight he thinks, the numbers blurry in his heavy eyes.

There are text messages from Hannibal, a _be home soon_ that makes Will’s heart skip a beat, but that’s not the thing trying to get his attention.

“Shit,” he curses softly, the dating app he’d downloaded months ago, where he’d met Hannibal, flashing with a new notification.

He thought he’d signed out of his account the week he went to Atlanta, but apparently not. Opening the app to get to the user settings, his home screen is instead filled with lewd double entendre and blatant offers to hook up. Not all the messages are positive, and he grimaces at some of the spam, deleting it with a flick of his index finger.

_JacktheRipper shares a blood type with you. Answer JacktheRipper back?_

Will blinks, suddenly alert. JacktheRipper, like Jack Crawford. I blocked you, I was sure I blocked you.

He scrolls through the other ridiculous system-generated comments, _T_B likes puppies too! Wanna have your very own litter with T_B? RTManny wants to get to know you on another level_ , but no other usernames are familiar, and he doesn’t see anyone he’s blocked pop up again.

Dragging himself upright, he groans as he stumbles to the pitcher. Overdue on his next dose of two pills.

His phone vibrates and beeps again, and he’s about to delete the app entirely so he won’t have to hear it when he tries to fall back asleep, but he can’t help but see the new notification scrolling across the screen.

 _JacktheRipper has sent you a message_.

“Get the fuck away from me,” he mutters nonsensically, but clicks on the message, morbidly curious in the same way he’d maintained the back and forth with Hannibal that’d eventually brought him here.

The message text, while only seven words, jolts him fully awake and he swallows, heart pounding at the impossibility of it.

 _I know who you are, Will Graham_.

Double and triple checking, he looks through his settings—no last name filled in—and taps on his gallery, the one geotagged photo that led Hannibal to him having been deleted long ago.

You’re being paranoid. This could be Jimmy just messing around. Or even better, Freddie fucking Lounds. Seems like something she would do.

But he’s starting to feel nauseated again, the only way he could feasibly demand an answer from any of his friends or people who did genuinely know him at school being to contact them and having Bev and the guys send the cops to Hannibal’s door with some wild claim he was being held against his will.

Imagine that, Hannibal Lecter—model citizen and routine life-saver—being questioned for kidnapping a sick college kid for whatever nefarious reasons he could cook up.

Will snorts to himself. That’d be a good laugh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone’s wondering, I’m planning on Will eventually Knowing.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A small dinner party, and growing even closer. From here on out, shifting POVs abound.
> 
> WARNINGS: Mason being Mason. Canon-level abuse, but nothing explicit. Also, if you're not here for the handwavey sex about to take place, shield your eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might be posting multiple chapters from here on out, so please check out chapter four first if you missed it.

 

The artist walks silently throughout the gallery, taking stock of his guests.

Intended to have been a small, soft opening of his next collection, one of his staff had taken liberties and promised viewings to at least a hundred, some of them the competition. In the grand scheme of things, this is a minor affront at best, so the artist moves on in hopes of finding his wife, who must be lingering here somewhere—at worst, hiding behind one of the large decorative palms scattered throughout the lobby.

It had been regrettable leaving France, though he had made much of a stink amongst the authorities for crimes he may or may not have participated in, and they had been a hair’s breadth away from identifying him as a suspect.

But that was in the past, he thought, and that was where it should remain.

“This is really quite lovely!” a woman gushes, approaching him with her arms out as if to clutch at him to emphasize her absolute glee. While he condones the emotions his paintings no doubt evoke, he does not want to be fondled by a stranger. Deflecting her by passing a full glass of champagne from a passing waiter’s tray, she accepts the drink with a muttered thanks and toasts him though he has nothing in his hands to return the gesture with.

Watching the woman wandering away, wondering if she should be offended, the artist chuckles beneath his breath and turns to the piece that had her so enraptured. Entitled Nude #5, it really is quite something to behold, he thinks, balancing his chin on his hand.

In the manner of Matisse and Picasso, he had abstracted his subject’s form into mere geometric proportions, his own input to twist her into an impossible position, utilizing a garish monochrome ochre palette to complete the whole monstrosity.

In the manner of a good con artist, he had put lipstick on a pig and called it the most beautiful woman in the world. Though offers to buy or sell had been floating around all evening—Mrs. Rosencratz from Sotheby’s had been sniffing around since he announced the completion of a new portfolio of work last month—he guessed the adoring horde would not be so eager to throw their money at him had they known Nude #5, minus its initial rough outlines, had been entirely painted by his five-year-old-son.

Maverick with a brush, in his opinion, but he would either be decried false or hailed a genius if the sad little cattle ever managed to pry the secret from his cold, dead hands.

“You have that look on your face,” his wife says, approaching from behind without a single early indication of her presence. Lord, if their places were reversed, he would not be capable of such silence in four-inch heels.

“What look?” he protests, grinning, though his smile quickly fades as he realizes the piece before him has changed since he saw it last. There—like a membrane sliding back.

“I hadn’t noticed it before,” he says, his wife with a hand on his shoulder now that is probably meant to be calming.

“That’s because you—contrary to what that descriptor card says—did not labor over it for the five months you claimed.”

“Besides the point, my love—look!”

He points to the right edge of the painting, where, at shoulder-level to his wife, a distinct smear exists in the work, made by the impression of four fingers, neatly in a row.

“I shouldn’t have done it in oil,” the artist mutters, and his wife, vigilant as always, gently steers him towards the buffet, where a man is drunkenly berating himself in a flutter of stolen cocktail napkins. Balling the napkins up, stained with incriminating ochre, the man hisses, “Think you were so clever…” before walking right past them toward the door, head down.

His wife leans over and provides the man’s name. A former museum curator, she says, sweeping the napkins into a nearby trash can. The artist remembers then, how the man had attempted to bully another painting into his modern art collection or some such. How irritable he’d been when the artist had said no.

Using another cocktail napkin, the artist picks up the curator’s discarded gum from where it’s been stuck to the buffet table.

“Charming,” he says.

 

 

 

“Your phone was beeping repeatedly,” Hannibal informs him, with an edge of distaste in his voice, and Will wonders, for a serious second before the moment passes, whether his—online date? boyfriend? friend-who’s-a-doctor?—has super hearing as well.

“It’s nothing,” he says. “Probably just my friends trying to get me to say I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth.”

Having been horizontal in Hannibal’s bed for what feels like an eternity of hours (completely innocently, Graham, don’t turn red), he’s glad to be up and about again, socks protecting him from the cold hardwood as they cross into the kitchen.

Creepy, he can’t help but think. Though the outer façade definitely has them, he hasn’t seen a single room in this house with windows, except for Hannibal’s bedroom, though they were covered with heavy blackout curtains that he had no desire to move. Maybe it was like a movie set; pull them back and he’d find nothing but drywall behind.

“I’m afraid I’m not completely familiar with your class schedule yet. I would recommend against driving back today, but if you have class tomorrow,” Hannibal starts, and Will snaps out of his contemplative haze to shake his head. No, Hannibal had asked him if he wanted to help make breakfast. They were in the kitchen right now, and that was all he wanted to think about.

“I do, but I don’t want to leave yet,” he says, not waiting for a reaction, though he hears Hannibal inhale, just audible in the quiet space.

“Your…friend…Beverly has been calling. You should answer her, so she does not worry.”

“Yeah,” Will scoffs, scrubbing hands through his no doubt sight-to-behold bed hair. “She’ll probably file a missing person’s by tomorrow, if she hasn’t already.”

He sighs, trying to focus on the familiar sounds of pots and pans clanking, the refrigerator opening, as he swipes to open his phone.

_Beverly K. (10) missed calls._

There’s another message bubble from the dating app, and Will shudders at the message—what kind of stupid prank was that, I know who you are—before shrugging it off to handle his most pressing problem. Tapping Bev’s number, he weighs whether the truth or a lie will best help him explain the situation, and goes with the latter, just in time for his friend to pick up.

“Will?” she says, and her voice is more hesitant than he would’ve expected. “Are you okay? Crawford told me to give you some old homework back because you missed class the other day.”

He’d e-mailed his professors to let them know he was sick, which they may or may not have believed, but Crawford knew Will always tried to attend his class and had probably told Bev, so why did she sound so worried?

“Yeah, Bev, I’m fine. I mean, I’m getting over a virus, but other than being extremely lazy this past few days, I’m okay.”

She sighs, and winds up for the fastball.

“Then why haven’t you shot off a text, hm? Left a two second message? Email? Jesus, Graham, you emailed Crawford and not us? I’m hurt.”

He opens his mouth to say something, laughing at how fast her mood had changed, but before he can, she says, fishing, “Dorm RA says she hasn’t seen you around though. Are you staying somewhere off-campus? Please say it’s not with that guy you met.”

Will has the same choice again, truth or lie, and chooses the same result.

“No—God, Bev, I’m not a complete idiot,” he says, grasping for an excuse. “I’m staying with a family friend. Extremely old.” Tries not to laugh as Hannibal raises an eyebrow at him, pouring cooking oil into a pan. “Definitely harmless. I just wanted to go somewhere familiar for a while.”

Bev’s silent for a beat too long, and he wonders if he’s oversold it.

“Well, make sure you’re not getting him sick, too,” she says, launching off into a mini-lecture about weakened immunity among the very young and very old.

“I didn’t mean old, old, I meant like your parents’ age,” he clarifies, and smacks a hand over his face, not wanting to see Hannibal’s expression about _that_.

“Willy,” a voice calls, “Git yer ass in here and make yerself some food.”

Will blinks, and uncovers his eyes.

“Jesus, okay, you’re being summoned,” Beverly laughs. “Just…make sure you call next time. Uh, when you’re back here and better, I need to tell you something.”

“Tell me what,” he says, but she’s ended the call.

Tossing his phone onto the armchair on the other side of the island—who had a kitchen big enough form armchairs?—he glares across the counter at Hannibal, who is innocently frying something on the stove.

“Are you a freaking Terminator or something? What was _that_?”

Hannibal has _an_ answer ready, though Will really doesn’t know whether or not it’s a real answer.

“When I first came to America, I studied English with an instructor who had a very prominent accent.”

“You’re pulling my leg,” Will scoffs, and Hannibal shrugs.

“I admit a certain weakness for country westerns,” he says, and maybe this is the truth.

The fact that it’s so difficult to figure out is intriguing rather than frustrating, and Will tries to slow himself down for a moment, but can’t hide from the fact that he’s already pretty far gone. Existing in Hannibal’s home, for as little time as he’s spent, it’s nonetheless significant. Everything in the house is spotless and carefully chosen, but there’s no humanity in a place without a bit of clutter or noise, and with Hannibal usually gone most of the day, there’d been none of that, until him.

“Hey, you want me to help you, you better let me flip the omelet at least. Looks like you’re basically done there,” he says, trying not to imagine himself waking up and expecting this every day. He knows he would be able to walk out of here tomorrow, leave the house, the expensive car in the garage without a second thought, but leaving the person who collected those things would prove more difficult than he wanted to risk.

We haven’t even done more than kiss yet.

“We’re far from done, Will. We still have to make your lunch and dinner, to be safe. There will always be another emergency, and I have not entirely finished that insurance paperwork from earlier this week. I also have to go to the grocer’s for Wednesday. Doctor Bloom is planning to come over for dinner.”

Will’s eyebrows shoot up before he can help it. Coming over for—Okay, don’t panic, Doctor Bloom was Alana, from Hannibal’s office. Doctor Bloom who specialized in child and family psych and sometimes worked with the FBI.

Men and women could be friends, but it wasn’t like Will had specifically asked Hannibal what his sexuality was. Judging by Will, he obviously didn’t mind dating younger, and it was childish to assume that because Hannibal and Alana were both attractive and close meant they’d once slept together. In fact, them being close would have logically precluded them ever having an affair.

Besides, from what Hannibal had told him, Alana had Margot now.

Will frowned in sympathy at the thought of the woman he’d never met. No one had gone into detail about it, but Alana openly showing her anguish in front of a stranger in a hurry to confide to Hannibal had shown him where her head was at.

Mason, Margot. The names sounded familiar, but Will couldn’t put a face to them. Were they some sort of celebrities? He hoped it wasn’t anything tabloid-worthy, as the names he kept in his memory were usually to do with something heinous.

“Anyone else?” he manages, trying not to sound too eager for an invitation, or too eager at disproving his irrational twinge of jealousy either.

“A few surprise guests I think you would like to see, if you stay,” Hannibal says, easy peasy, and Will gulps.

Uh-oh.

Hannibal wasn’t even trying to argue that all he should concentrate on was getting better and going back to class.

“Are you trying to manipulate me into playing hooky?”

“I’m simply pointing out that it would be a shame to waste your convalescence merely idling your time away in my bedroom.”

By the half-grin on his face, Hannibal had intended his statement to sound exactly as it did, and Will rolls his eyes, hoping it conceals how much he wished the double entendre would come true.

“I accept, then,” Will says, not thinking of anything save the incomparably delicious food they’d shared in Atlanta, responsibilities be damned.

“Good. Fill this pot with water, leave about an inch at the top. You’ll need it at a rolling boil.”

Will does as requested, spotting a container with bright red lettering on the counter. “Miso paste. I’m assuming this goes in the water?”

“It will help keep you warm. The house is old and drafty, and I don’t want you to catch cold.”

They both know that’s not how colds work, but Will smiles at the thoughtfulness anyway.

“Would you like green onions, egg, nori, or some combination of the above?”

“Um, I don’t really like seaweed,” Will says. “But okay to the onions. I’ll just have the omelet for my eggs, thanks.”

They go through what feels like a few dozen ingredients and pots and pans to fill the four large burners, but not an hour passes and Will has three square meals, a dessert, and one extra, just in case.

“Eat slowly and try to regain your strength. Start with the soup,” Hannibal says, shedding his apron and untying the one Will’s wearing, for which Will is grateful (he’s trying not to think how comically low it’d hung on him).

“You should open a restaurant. You’ve got the time-management part down,” he says lamely, because in all the excitement of this amazing hour (look at that, Graham, you can cook more than Ramen noodles in a microwave!), he’d forgotten that Hannibal actually had a day job to get to.

“I don’t have the patience or finesse to run a restaurant,” Hannibal smiles, and Will sighs through his nose. As if regularly stitching broken people back together doesn’t require either.

“Okay, okay,” Will says. “I get it, you’re already busy. But really, the stuff you made for us before? It was probably the best thing I’ve ever tasted. And I never say that. Or that I’m expecting this to be just as good.”

“I’m honored,” Hannibal says, not smiling anymore. His eyes are almost eerie, Will thinks, a dark red color that’s probably not supposed to exist in nature.

The devil works in mysterious ways.

“And that sounds like something out of a romance novel. Are you stealing pickup lines from Nora Roberts?” Will says, nervous and coping with it poorly. Still, he is not known for being approachable, and Hannibal knows this.

“Will,” he says, very intent. “Sometimes there is nothing wrong with silence, or a simple ‘thank you’.” And pecks Will on the cheek, like he can suddenly do something like that, go off to work and have the last word.

Bastard, Will thinks, but he’s nearly smiling.

 

 

 

The four meals and dessert from the weekend were the richest cuisine—not food, the word food was too pedestrian for what Hannibal had showed him—he’d ever eaten, but Wednesday is downright insulting to his usual diet of Whatever’s Cheap and Half Expired in the Cafeteria.

“Yeah, I’ve never used shallots before. Or shallots with wine.”

“Then this will hopefully be the first time of many. Although it is always wise to expand your palette. Taste is what you make of it, Will. If you try something you don’t like, try something else.”

“This is pretty damned perfect from where I’m standing, but I know what you’re sayin’.” Still, he’d moved about fifty times before he turned fifteen, so settling down to anything reliable, even a recipe, was his own way of balancing things out. Whenever he got his hands on money for his own ingredients, he’d make the same pork chop dish his daddy had made a decade ago. “Even though ‘taste’ in popular culture is just synonymous with whatever rich people say it is. Even if it’s crammin’ a bunch of ugly zebra-patterned furniture into a tiny room and callin’ it interior decorating.”

“Are we going to talk the philosophy of popular culture at dinner?”

“You think it’s, what’s the word you would use…Gauche? It ain’t religion or politics.”

“It skirts both issues,” Hannibal says, gesturing for him to flip the fish. Their first trial had been disastrous, but Will knew now, let the damned thing cook fully before trying to pry it from the pan.

Hannibal’s about to check on the tart ramekins in the oven when the doorbell rings, Will marveling at how far the sound echoes, a long, ringing note through the cavernous halls.

“Didn’t you say six?” he asks, the time on Hannibal’s phone displaying 4:45.

“Seems as if someone’s eager to see you,” Hannibal says, cryptically, and Will wonders if Alana had asked about him, or if the “surprise guests” have come to gawk at the college boy Doctor Lecter had swept off his feet.

Gets his answer thirty seconds later, hearing the pounding of little feet a long time before Abigail Hobbs bursts through the kitchen doorway, screeching to a halt when she sees him.

I’m not a lion at the zoo, he wants to complain, because that’s how she’s looking at him, a bit scared, a lot excited.

“Will!” she chirps.

He gets the general impression that she wants to launch herself at him the way she’d hugged Hannibal at his office the other day, but is unsure of how he would take it. Maybe a few months ago, she would’ve jumped at him without a second thought, but her father and her stay at Port Haven have changed her. He can practically see the wheels turning in her head—Are you my friend?

He’s genuinely surprised she hasn’t forgotten him, with all the other people she sees on a more constant basis, and though he’s never been sure whether or not he’s one of those people who really _get_ kids, he kneels down a bit and holds out his arms.

Careening into him without another word, long hair streaming behind her, Abigail lands on him with an exaggerated “oof!”

“I brought colors again,” she says. “Most adults don’t color with me, but I know you like to.”

Will’s no artist, but with all that Abigail’s been through, the least he can do is scribble in a coloring book with her.

“Wow, it smells good,” she hums, reaching up on tip-toe for a stirring spoon hanging over the edge of the pan.

Trying to divert her attention without being so clearly restrictive, he steers her arm away from the flame and grips the spoon, letting her grab ahold of the end.

“Okay, let’s stir this way.”

“You gotta get the stuff at the bottom of the pan, that’s the good stuff,” Abigail points out, and Will wonders whether he’s on unsteady ground. It’s not like they would’ve let her cook at Port Haven.

“Do you cook, Abigail?”

“Uh, Daddy did,” she says. “Daddy and Mommy did.”

Will absentmindedly continues to baste the fish he’s practicing with, thinking, Hannibal’s voice in his head, sometimes silence will suffice, when Abigail decides to steer the conversation elsewhere. Her expression remains pinched, but at least he hasn’t given himself another opportunity to inadvertently steer her towards talking about her dead parents.

“How do you know Hannibal? Alana says you’re friends, but he’s older than you. No way you met him in school. Do you live around here?”

“No, I don’t live around here,” he replies, starting to sweat. Where the hell are Hannibal and Alana and—okay, Abigail was mystery guest one, who else is out there?

“Abigail. I’ve put your backpack in the sitting room with Alana. Do you want to go with her to meet our other guest when he arrives, or do you want to stay here and help?”

“Definitely help,” Abigail nods, and Hannibal strokes her hair—a surprisingly fatherly gesture that makes Will’s throat tight—before disappearing into the pantry. He emerges a few moments later with a stepstool that he places next to the island.

The oven timer goes off, and Will jumps a little at the noise, Abigail laughing as she catches him. Loosening up a bit, he chuckles to himself, too, and helps Hannibal get out a cooling rack from one of the island’s many cabinets.

“Have you ever made fruit tarts, Abigail?”

Abigail considers. “Are those like pie?” she asks, and Hannibal probably bends a lot of his culinary rules by saying, “Sort of. Like many types of pie, you’ll need a custard and fresh fruit.”

“Whipped cream!” Abigail suggests, peering down at the large, flat dishes resting on the baking pan that Hannibal pulled out of the oven.

“And a bit of mint, if you like,” Hannibal says, as if he’s said so a thousand times before.

Will frowns to himself, turning down the burner as he flips his fish and tries not to splatter liquid everywhere.

He hadn’t expected Hannibal to be good with kids—his interests didn’t exactly align with what he presented to the world; this house definitely was _not_ childproof—but how taken Abigail was with him made Will wonder about his family.

They hadn’t even gotten to that part yet, but family was a personal sore spot, so it’s not like he’d wanted to ask and disillusion himself if Hannibal had a half-dozen happy siblings and academically accomplished parents like most of his friends did.

“Very good, Will. A tad overcooked, but I trust you’ll be able to turn out at least half the entrees for dinner tonight.”

“A tad overcooked? You didn’t even taste it yet,” Will protests, though it’s hard to stay mad at the heartwarming sight of Abigail conscientiously adding ingredients to a mixing bowl, Hannibal letting her do everything on her own, though he does prevent an accident with the cornstarch.

“You will have a chance to redeem yourself in a few minutes,” Hannibal says. “But I will nonetheless take what you have made for lunch tomorrow.”

“How domestic of you,” Will teases, telling himself his face is only heated from the range.

 

 

 

“How’s Margot?”

They’ve just sat down in their places—Hannibal, at the head of the table, his artist friend and Alana to his left, Will and Abigail to his right—and spent the obligatory (and merited) ten minutes cooing over the food, when Will senses a lull in the conversation and tries to find something to say.

He doesn’t want to come off as uncaring, but by the drawn look on Alana’s face, maybe he shouldn’t have brought it up.

“Thank you for asking,” she says, reaching out over the table to him when he looks down at his plate. “No, I really—I really mean that, Will. You’re very sweet. She’s staying at my brother’s, for now. She’s…good.”

Whether or not Hannibal’s other friend knows who Margot is or why she was in the hospital is a mystery to Will, though he does notice that the man’s lip twitches as tears gather at the corners of Alana’s eyes.

“It was sweet of you to remember,” she says, her voice hitching a bit, though it’s clearly got to do more with her girlfriend than her being genuinely touched at Will’s comment.

“I’m sure things will work out,” Hannibal’s friend says.

“Balthus,” Hannibal frowns, but Alana holds a hand up.

“No, everyone, it’s fine. Margot’s gonna be fine. Thank you for your concern, Will.” Smile reaches her eyes. “And you, Erik.” Eyes narrow into a glare.

“Now that that’s out of the way, the more important question: Who are you again?” Erik asks, gesturing across the table to Will.

Abigail giggles, and stabs a shallot onto her fork.

“That’s Will, you met him earlier,” she says, and Erik chuckles lowly. Will’s reminded of the cliché of the self-absorbed wealthy, but it does seem accurate, he thinks.

“That’s good, spot-on, petit chérie, but more to the point. Are there wedding bells in the future, or are you one of those grad students he goes after in the summer months when he’s bored?”

“You have no room to talk,” Hannibal says. “I met Will online. We have had lunch once.”

“No wedding bells,” Will coughs. God, if all of Hannibal’s other friends were like this, he wasn’t gonna regret not asking about _family_. “And we’ve had a little more than lunch. I’ve been staying here for the week, since that was gonna be the question you were gonna ask next.”

Erik ignores him as if he hasn’t just spoken.

“Online,” he says, dismissive. “Guess being married means I’m missing out.” Whatever that means.

“Careful, cousin,” Hannibal says, and Abigail tugs at Will’s sleeve, leaning in to whisper something in his ear.

“I don’t really like the fish,” she says loudly, and Will thinks, _God, I should’ve asked about his family_.

“Sorry. _Cousin_ ,” Erik simpers, looking very pleased with himself.

 

 

 

“He’s a character,” Will says, waving politely as Balthus pulls out of the drive when all he really wants to do is flip him the bird. Geezus, if he ever had to live with that; he could honestly say that he’d never more appreciated being an orphan. “But thank you for inviting Alana as a buffer. And Abigail.”

“I have very little family left, save my cousin’s. His parents live in Japan, and Erik lives here. Unfortunately, I lack the vacation days to visit Hiroshima for as long as I would like.”

“Slim pickings,” Will says, glad that they’re on the same page.

“I confess I invited Alana to see how she was doing, in person. She was reluctant to talk about Margot’s condition over the phone.”

“I know it’s none of my business, but I’ve heard those two names together before. Margot and Mason, are they some sort of public figures?”

“They’re Molson Verger’s children,” Hannibal says, and Will nods, “The billionaire’s kids. Okay, that explains why she’s hiding Margot from him. The entire nation heard what he did to her when they were both still little. Not even Daddy’s money could cover that up.”

“Mason is a monster,” Hannibal agrees, in the same nonchalant tone normal people use to describe the weather.

“You ever met him?”

“Once. He made a joke about needing psychiatric help, and asked if I was that kind of doctor.”

“I bet you were glad he was only joking. And that you’re not that kind of doctor.”

“And you were glad I was a surgeon instead.”

Will feels himself taking a step backward, and shakes himself at how meaningless the motion is. Hannibal had sent him a photo of a dead body over a dating app and he’d called it flirting.

“Of course I was glad,” he snorts. “I’ve always taken an issue with people who find it entertaining to poke around in my head.”

“You must have noticed my attempts to do the same. Albeit, in a much less invasive way.”

They’re half a room apart—Hannibal had poured them both a drink and lit the sitting room fireplace—but neither of them have sat down, and Will, surprising himself, takes the first step forward to close the distance between them.

“Like forcing me into kissing you on a first date and taking off before I could ask you to do it again?”

He doesn’t need any liquid courage when Hannibal’s looking at him like that, but the burn of the scotch settles deep down in his belly and helps him feel like this could be a natural next step. He didn’t call a friendly near-stranger and let himself get carted off to his house to make good decisions, after all.

“I didn’t force you to do anything, Will,” Hannibal says, voice low. The light of the fire licks at his pupils, and Will wonders if the same heat is reflected in his own eyes. His hands are bruising on Will’s arm and on the dip of his spine.

“But you could,” Will whispers. “And I got a feelin’ I could force you right back.” He takes a breath, to keep this from going too far, though he knows that’s the only place it’ll ever go, after tonight. “You gonna leave me to an empty room by myself, or you gonna come up to bed?”

 

 

 

“Should I put up a neon sign? ‘DTF’? Isn’t that how people talk nowadays?” Will asks, and Hannibal snorts.

“I remember feeling quite virile at your age, but my refractory period was not quite as short as yours.”

“At your age? Jesus, Hannibal, you’re thirty-nine, not fifty-nine.”

“And I would prefer, next time we do this, to look at you in the light.”

Will mumbles unhappily, squirming at the come drying in his pants.

Hannibal had done the genius thing and packed him an overnight bag before they left New Orleans, so it’s not like he didn’t have extra clothes or, God forbid, the big red sweater Hannibal had leant him out of his own closet the other day, but was it gross that Will wanted to wait here in the dark with his hand still wrapped around his almost-boyfriend’s cock on the floor of said almost-boyfriend’s gigantic bedroom?

“Okay, so turn the lamps on. Then you can see me in the light,” he pouts, blinking at the sudden glow.

They’d missed the bed by a mile.

“You can have the shower. I still have to clean up downstairs,” Hannibal says cordially, and Will swallows.

Or we could shower together.

“Thanks,” is what he says instead, and tries desperately not to touch himself while he’s in the bath, feeling guilty as his hand drifts to his cock, staring at the now-familiar dark blue tiles surrounding him. He hasn’t come in his pants from a mutual hand job in, well…ever.

Not like he’s had a ton of opportunities, but the guys he has slept with had at least managed to get the tip in before he lost it.

A buzz in the back of his ear—someone laughing, and Will starts to come back down to earth again. The antivirals had cleared his head of Hobbs, but of course his mind couldn’t let him have three seconds of clarity before kicking him in the ass and reminding him of what a freak he was.

The thought kills whatever hint of pleasure he’d been meaning to get out of his shower, and he scrubs himself quickly and dries off, dresses in a long-sleeved shirt Hannibal’s thrown onto the end of the bed next to his own pajama pants.

See how you like that.

Climbing into bed, he reaches onto the opposite nightstand for the tablet there, smiling for a moment as he realizes that Abigail’s coloring book page has apparently taken up permanent residence.

Still have nothing to hide?

He hasn’t seen a TV or computer anywhere in the house, but he supposes there’s no need for one. Clicking the home button, he slides his finger across the screen and holds his breath as the tablet unlocks.

Huh.

A popup hastily informs him that he has to re-enter his VPN password in order to access the internet, but Will’s more concerned with the still open page beneath, exiting out of the smaller window to read the Tattle Crime headline timestamped earlier this morning.

_Ripper gets creative: Joggers stumble upon body installed in Albright Park sculpture_

There’s a picture included beneath, a middle-aged man posed in his underwear, leaning heavily over the shoulder of a bronze explorer, both the man and his surrounding metal compatriots peering down at an unrolled map.

The caption reads: The victim, whose name has been withheld, is missing the fingertips of his left hand and both of his eyes. The statue he has unwittingly become part of was commissioned by the city in 1997, to commemorate the pilgrim explorers who originally settled the Old-Line State. Police and the Baltimore County Coroner’s Office have declined to release the victim’s specific cause of death, but a trusted FBI source is quoted as saying “It’s the damned Ripper, alright?”

“Sticky fingers?” he wonders aloud, startling when Hannibal calls from the doorway, “Look with your eyes, not with your hands.”

“Maybe the victim did the opposite. Touched something that wasn’t meant to be touched,” Will says, with no fear of being judged or laughed at. Or graded, he thinks; though Crawford often congratulates Will on his insight, he has no interest in any of his students beyond ensuring they’ll perform so he’ll remain on tenure track.

“Something I’m sure most of us are guilty of,” Hannibal smiles, and Will raises a brow. He notes that Hannibal does not comment on the absence of his shirt and merely pulls on his pants without asking why Will has suddenly found it an attractive prospect to appropriate his clothes.

“I stole a watermelon in the fifth grade, but that hardly qualifies me to be slaughtered like a cow,” he argues. “The Ripper’s theatricality is on display here, but the body—It’s different. ‘Declined to release cause of death’? Normally, with the Ripper, you’ll be able to tell exactly what killed someone. Blood loss, for one.”

“Theatricality?” Hannibal says, brow furrowed now.

“The Ripper’s weird to pin down—Remember Jack Crawford, the professor I was telling you about? He’s big on organizational schematics. If it can’t fit in a box or a category, it freaks him out. He likes the nomad insurance salesman or rage killers with a history of lesser crimes, that makes sense to him.

“But the Ripper’s not like that. He’s been socialized, difficult childhood or not. He doesn’t have an extensive criminal history, maybe not even a parking ticket, because he’s done this before, and somehow, not even the FBI’s figured him out yet.

“He usually doesn’t kill outside of Baltimore, but someone could’ve missed similar patterns if he worked hard enough at it.”

“And he must, otherwise the FBI would’ve caught him,” Hannibal says.

“So, he doesn’t move around a lot, he’s not on law enforcement’s radar for red flags like B&E and petty theft. Every kill is a big production. It’d take most people days of planning, but for him, it might take a few hours to plan and execute. No muss, no fuss.

“I’m not sure it’s such hyperintelligence how the papers like to claim, so much as practice.”

“He’s had quite a repertoire.”

“Every kill a chance to improve. Say he’s in his forties or fifties; still strong enough to move people around, not clumsy enough to make a mistake. He’s honed whatever twisted kind of skill it takes to do what he does. You can find that in everyday life, like tonight.

“I hadn’t ever cooked with wine before, and turns out I wasn’t even managing the fish properly in the first place. But I ate what you cooked, and however much time you put into figuring out the perfect technique, it paid off.”

Hannibal’s used Will’s impassioned rant on the subject as a distraction. There’s no time to be shy or skittish now when the doctor has already climbed onto the other side of the bed. Both now leaning up against the headboard, Will feels their shoulders knock together as he hands Hannibal the tablet.

“In your case, some manner of natural talent must be taken into account. A willingness to learn. Would you apply these aspects of performance to the Ripper’s pathology as well? Perhaps he has some genetic predisposition to _desire_ to kill.”

Will sighs. “I think he’s just somebody who wanted to do it once and never stopped. Maybe it wasn’t even jumping over a big hurdle, in the beginning. He’s just…always performing. Has to top his last performance, every time. Must be exhausting.

“And no one around him even appreciates it, imagine that.”

Will realizes what he’s said and wants to take the words back; they sound too sympathetic to someone who’s ruined countless peoples’ lives. Sympathetic is not the right word for it, he thinks. All around pity is more how he feels for everyone involved. Pity mostly for the victims, pity for the Ripper, even, who can never have anyone enjoy his craft on the same level it was surely intended.

Pity for himself, that his dwelling on it has led to a kernel of comprehension, like a speck of gold shining in a river. Jesus, what would he find if he really took the time to look closer?

“Perhaps someone does. You do,” Hannibal points out, and Will shuts off the tablet screen.

“I—I’m sorry I even brought it up. I wasn’t snooping on your tablet, I swear. Just waiting for you.”

“It’s no problem, darling,” Hannibal says, and that’s how Will knows he’s telling the truth.

“Let’s talk about something else. Anything else but the Ripper.”

“I’m sure we’ll think of something,” Hannibal smirks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I headcanoned the easiest person possible as Balthus, Hannibal's (book canon) painter cousin: Lars Mikkelsen.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal learns about JackTheRipper, the digital stranger attempting to gain Will’s attention.
> 
> Someone messes with Will over the phone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for invasion of privacy, but Hannibal is Hannibal, so...
> 
> Sorry this has taken so long, to anyone still reading this. I’m still working out exactly where I want this thing to go, so here’s a short chapter while I figure it out and try not to get distracted by other ideas and WIPs...

Will had informed him that his cell phone was finicky, but its insistence at making noise every few seconds is irritating. He does not turn it off _for_ Will, lest the boy feel uncomfortable at communication no longer being an arm’s reach away, but considers smashing it with the sledgehammer he keeps in the basement for a moment before simply getting out of bed and fulfilling his curiosity.

The girl Will always talks about—Beverly—had been addressed a few days previous, but perhaps she was calling again.

Leaving Will in bed to snore, in his soft, kittenish way, he brings Will’s cell phone into his study, where there are plenty of opportunities to conceal the phone and return it to the bedroom drawer later should Will stir and follow him.

By now, he has deduced and memorized Will’s passcode and thumbs through a collection of text messages and missed calls, one that appears to be a telemarketer and another with a caller ID associated with the university that Will attends. Nothing is terribly pressing, though he does scroll to a second home screen that contains most of the phone’s applications, an alarming number of notifications from a familiar dating app logged in the corner of the application tile.

Safe to say Will has not answered any of the app’s thirty-seven prompts, and Hannibal waits for the app to load, taking careful care not to accidentally open any of the available messages that have flooded Will’s inbox.

A few solicitations for performance-enhancing drugs, mostly site-generated messages to indicate another profile has interest in Will’s. A block of text near the bottom of the list catches Hannibal’s attention, and he blinks.

He cannot read the entire message body, but the username listed is JacktheRipper, and he sees enough of the text to irritate him further.

 _Like I said, I know who you are, Will Graham. You sit with that girl who_ …

JacktheRipper’s message trails off into the next, and Hannibal wonders why Will has not told him about this activity on the app.

‘Like I said.’

This person has contacted Will before, though Hannibal does not see anything telling in the previous pages of the inbox, or in the trash or spam files.

‘You sit with that girl.’

Miss Katz?

Without gaining more insight into the full content of the message, the sentence is vague and inconclusive. There are plenty of anonymous people on the internet capable of stringing an abstract threat together, but what pulls at Hannibal is that Will had left the last name on his profile unlisted.

Returning Will’s phone to the bedroom and fetching his own, he realizes he’s missed a page from the ER two minutes ago. Will’s sleeping so deeply that the phone could’ve vibrated off the night stand and clattered onto the floor and he wouldn’t have heard it.

Opening the dating app on his own phone as he gets dressed and writes a note to Will in the near-dark, he touches the boy’s soft curls, silently promising to be back soon. Of course, it is likely he’ll work straight through to another shift and more, but he will try.

After all, he always keeps his promises.

 

 

 

Will wakes up at around one to a full bladder, and sighs when he hears the landline ring downstairs while he’s washing his hands.

The acoustics in this place were insane.

What if it’s important, he thinks, thinking of Hannibal’s note—back to work, text me if you need anything—and trying to reassure himself. It was late, and Hannibal already worked long hours. What if it was someone calling to say he’d had a car accident or needed something from home?

Racing downstairs so fast he gets lightheaded, the phone miraculously still ringing, he picks it up with a groggy hello.

Breathing, on the other end of the line, just for a few seconds, and then the line goes dead.

“Fucking phone scams,” he says aloud, and heads back upstairs.

Before he can get there, the phone rings again.

“Hello,” he says, more forcefully, and is fully prepared to chew someone out when he hears the breathing intensify.

“P-Please,” a voice says, then moans. “P-please don’t…” A long, wet noise—an agonized sob—echoes in his ear.

“Who is this?” he demands, but all he hears is more we breathing. The dial tone sounds.

What the hell?

He’s halfway through dialing 911 when he realizes that all he’s got to tell them is someone breathed at him like they were in pain across the phone. Sounds like _he’s_ the one making the crank call if he even tries to explain it.

But what if it wasn’t a prank? Would they have any way of knowing where the call came from?

Fuck it, he thinks, and finishes dialing.

 

 

 

“He wanted a ‘surgeon with half a brain’,” Chilton greets, “And he didn’t think it was very funny when I told him that he could go home and seek help from a friend with a bolt cutter.”

“Is OR 5 available?” Hannibal asks, ignoring the jibe and attempting to take the patient’s chart from the triage nurse, who always insists at shoving it at everyone he works with as if he’s passing something off to an assistant. Eager to take extra smoke breaks and haphazard at his job, it is a miracle that Frederick Chilton has not been fired, and if not for the strength of the health workers’ union, he may well have been last year, when a patient nearly died due to his inattention.

“Mei and Delina are in 1 and 3, and the new resident’s in 4,” Chilton says, needlessly answering questions he did not ask. “So yes, five is good. Fair warning though, your patient really needs to turn his frown upside down.”

Hannibal resists the urge to curl his lip at Chilton and finds his way to bed 13, where his patient, Jeremy Olmstead, is waiting.

Though Chilton had not been working the first night Olmstead came into the ER with a bullet wound from an inexperienced hunting partner lodged in his scapula, Barney had been, and he is pleased to see the nurse with a hand on Olmstead’s shoulder now, forcing the troublesome patient to remain still.

“Now, Mister Olmstead, you don’t want that arrow to move around inside your leg, okay? A little bit to the left, and you’d have to worry about bleeding to death.”

Pity his aim hadn’t been truer, Hannibal thinks to himself, envisioning the weak pulse of the femoral artery beneath Olmstead’s skin.

“Mister Olmstead, not breaking the law again, I hope?”

Olmstead looks up. “Oh Jesus, not you again. Your job’s to patch me up, not to give me a fuckin’ lecture, jerkoff.”

“Hunting season officially starts tomorrow, Mister Olmstead.” The fool couldn’t wait one day. “Unless you’re going to tell Fish and Wildlife that you were practicing with your crossbow at midnight, dressed in full gear. They can explain it to the police for you.”

“Yeah, yeah, poachin’ is a fuckin’ crime.”

“A dangerous business,” Hannibal says, because at least when the knife finally slides through him, Olmstead can never complain that he wasn’t warned.

“Ha ha, fuckin’ get this bolt out of my leg and send me on my fuckin’ way, doc,” Olmstead presses, and Hannibal wonders if the man would even have the wherewithal to scream if Hannibal tore that arrow out and jammed it back into his leg in the right spot to stop his heart in thirty seconds.

Ideas, ideas.

“With pleasure,” Hannibal says.

 

 

 

It is late at night when he finally leaves the hospital after working another full shift, but this is not the thing that has Will nervously biting his lower lip and reluctant to look at him when he walks in the door.

“It’s alright if you borrowed the spare car, darling. I’m not keeping you here against your will,” he says, internally reminding himself _wiser words_ as Will laughs, evidently thinking he is joking.

“Um, I’m not worried about the car. It’s something else. God, I haven’t been able to sleep, thinking about it. I did go out today, to burn off some steam.”

“What is it?” he asks, moving to the hook near the coatrack, putting the Bentley’s keys next to the Jaguar’s.

“I wish I would’ve had my phone, to record it or something, but someone called here right after you left for the hospital. I thought it was a wrong number because they hung up right after I answered, but they called again, and—.”

Hannibal knows exactly what Will is going to say, and tries to school his expression into concern rather than annoyance at the source of the person causing Will’s current stress.

“Did the person say anything, other than make those sounds?” he asks, once Will has said his piece.

“I mean, he said ‘please’, a lot. ‘Please don’t’, like someone was hurting him! I called the police, but the 911 operator can’t do anything without knowing the number the call came from or its general location.”

“Neither of which you knew,” Hannibal says. Will looks devastated, having heard of someone in harm’s way and being unable to lift a finger to help. “I’m proud of you for trying. You must be exhausted.”

“I’m not exhausted, I’m pissed! And scared for whoever that was, if it was real. What are the odds he’d dial your number? I mean, I hope it’s not anyone you actually know.”

“It sounds like a prank,” Hannibal reassures.

“I fucking hope so,” Will mutters. “How was your patient? Well, the one who got you paged in the middle of the night?”

As tedious as all the others.

“In quite a creative jam,” he says, and Will’s expression turns again.

“Not as creatively as the Ripper treated that guy in the park, right?”

Hannibal nearly smiles. “Even if I was called to help a person like that, I wouldn’t be able to tell you.”

“Doctor-patient confidentiality, fine,” Will says. “Did they live, at least?”

He’s looking for something good out of the whole telephone fiasco—can’t save one, save another—so Hannibal gives him what he wants.

“Yes, they lived.”

Although I’m afraid third time won’t be a charm for Mister Olmstead in the future.

Will exhales deeply, and his left arm reaches out in an aborted motion before returning to hug at his own biceps.

“Good,” he whispers, like a talisman to cling to. “That’s good.”

 

 

 

Will is watching television in the downstairs study when Hannibal deems it safe to pick up the landline in the kitchen.

Dialing a number, he waits, receiving an answer on the third ring.

“If you don’t control yourself, they’ll find you.”

“And they’ll find you,” is the reply, followed by a chuckle.

Hannibal replaces the phone in its cradle and hums.

 _Someone new for the Rolodex_.

The thought fades quickly as it arrives. Humorous to think about, but impossible.

**Author's Note:**

> Look at these nerds aren't they just adorable.


End file.
